The result of all this is that whereas when I was last here, six years ago, only a very few houses had been built on the Jaffa road outside the walls of the town, now there is an extensive and constantly increasing Frank suburb. The price of land has risen fifty per cent., and is still constantly rising. New hotels and shops have been opened to meet the increasing demand. Within the last twenty years the population of the Holy City has certainly doubled, the increase consisting entirely of Jews and Christians. Apart from its sacred associations the city has no attractions as a residence of any kind, but quite the reverse. This fact possesses a highly important political significance, because it is evident that in the degree in which the vested interests of rival sects and religions accumulate upon this spot it is destined some day to become a bone of contention between them. It is probably the only city in the world where the same amount of capital and enterprise is expended on objects which are in no sense remunerative, while in proportion to its size there is none where a larger sum is annually given away, either in the form of charitable or religious donations. Nothing strikes one more than the proportion of buildings having some sort of public character or other to private dwellings, and these buildings are constantly increasing. This year the estimated expenditure of the Greek and Latin churches will be over $600,000 for building purposes alone. The number of Russian pilgrims who visit Jerusalem annually is about five thousand, and it is constantly increasing. They are all accommodated in the extensive premises belonging to the Russian government, in the centre of which the Russian consulate is situated, and which forms a sort of Russian suburb to the Holy City. Here one feels transported for the time to the dominions of the czar, as he hears on all sides the Slav tongue, and finds himself jostled by men and women in the peasant costume of their own country, chaffering over wares which the more enterprising of their number have imported to sell to their own country people, while they squat in stalls and booths which they have roughly extemporized for the purpose. When you consider the amount of foreign money which is annually expended in Jerusalem by these hosts of pilgrims—those of the Latin Church, however, do not equal in number those of the Greek—by the tourists and general influx of sightseers who flock here during Easter week, and by the churches and societies in building operations, you cannot wonder that many persons have of late years become wealthy, and that many natives of Syria and the Levant are attracted to the town in the hope of becoming so. The tide having thus set in, it goes on increasing, and the rivalry of the Latin and Greek churches imparts, as it were, a stimulus to the whole jumble of creeds and nationalities which cluster round the sacred shrines.